Notice GalNet changes

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
FD, you've killed any personality ED could ever have now. Large stories are great, but a galaxy is not the sum of four Galnet stories a week. You say we make the stories inbetween, but we can't write about them locally any longer.

You have not solved the problem about EDs 'story' v the players 'story' and how they overlap. All you have done is just cut you commitment.

How will you ever develop lore on the 'small things'? Will it all go into the codex?

This smacks of "we sacked the lore writers, and now we have run down the clock on the rest"

Will Powerplay ever feature now? Its the awkward child of Tier 1 characters run by FD, and supported by us.
 

Grimscrub

Grimscrub
Bit of a shame to be outright stopping them from the post note - could've been an excuse to offshoot and have some fluff moved to the various superpowers internal newspapers and expand them, someone writing out the whole article rather than random paragraph quotes from Vox Galactica and so on. Bringing some threads to main Galnet for major events later, as if they picked up on local reports... But, might just be me being a lorenerd.

As others noted though, if this means things are accelerating so there won't be any 'There is no news today, so here is some light music' incidents, fair enough.
 

Axle Reese

Axle Reese
Ian Doncaster said:
If this means that the amount of Galnet content won't change, but the percentage that's related to in-game content will increase, I think that's very positive - especially if that means that there's more non-routine in-game content going on than previously.

If this means that the amount of Galnet content related to in-game content won't change, but the total amount of Galnet content will decrease, then that feels like taking several steps back, to how things were two or three years ago when Galnet could go for weeks between non-automated news items.



I think also, while people weren't satisfied with the "off-camera" narratives, this was because they took place 100% off-camera, and often, more recently, in undefined locations so that people couldn't go looking for in-game signs of them. They felt like they weren't really happening in Elite Dangerous.

There's still, I think, room for quite a bit of off-camera narrative, provided that it relates to some in-game content as well. For example, the Enclave Interstellar Initiative could have had some "background" material in Galnet over the previous few months:
- 6 months before II starts: news article about how meta-alloys are being widely used in research
- 4 months before II starts: news article where some corporation expresses concerns about the meta-alloy supply security
- 1 month before II starts: story about scientists noting Pleiades barnacles are showing signs of damage
...and then go into the II with that as lead-up, rather than it suddenly starting with "meta-alloy prices double! exploration CG! no previous hints that there was any sort of issue!"
- and then of course potential for a few stories following up after the II months later highlighting the long-term effects it's had

If most of the stories eventually connected around to in-game events, they wouldn't need to all have in-game interactions directly associated with them for players to feel that they were relevant. (e.g. Drew Wagar's "Premonition" storyline was generally well-received and the finale had lots of players participating on both sides, despite most of the lead up happening "off-camera" and often even "off-Galnet") An in-game event which connected three stories from months or even years ago that people had assumed were just background flavour could be really exciting. (And it'd look like you'd planned it that way even if you'd just picked up those loose stories months later, too)
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This is spot on.
 

Happy Shrapnel

Happy Shrapnel
.....Fdev, why dont you just copy/paste previous Galnet news and present it as something new? Its not like you havnt got form when it comes to the old 'copy/paste' routine.. e.g Dropship, FGS, FAS, Chieftain, Crusader, Challenger, Krait II, Krait Phantom, Multicannons, Advanced Multicannons, Thargoid Cyclops, Thargoid Medusa, Thargoid Basilisk..
 

Valyn Arvis

Valyn Arvis
It would certainly be interesting to see more articles related to in-game events, but I fear they would still not depict the in-game reality, created by the community and all the groups and powers in it. That always was my criticism of GalNet. While there were many articles I enjoyed reading cause they increased immersion, they were often totally disconnected from the situation as it was and major player driven events just were never acknowledged. It was like reading a fantasy novel. What the community did never had any meaning, while Aisling had a near-marriage with a federal ambassador, which annoyed large parts of the community, because it felt totally out of place.
 

Fosdyke

Fosdyke
A more tied galnet to ingame events is a good thing. But all those stories brought since the start of the game makes elite more lively. A pity that Frontier get rid of them :(
 
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Florenus

Florenus
Stephen Benedetti said:
While GalNet provides an understanding of life in the 3300s, it hasn't always had a direct impact on your gameplay. We have been reviewing the effect this has had on your in-game experience, along with your feedback, and as a result, we’re going to be reducing the number of GalNet stories that we produce and instead focus on covering in-game content.

In the foreseeable future, GalNet articles will concentrate on in-game activity, such as Interstellar Initiatives, the release of new ships and modules, and significant narrative developments. With this change, we will be stopping the 'off-camera' narratives that we have previously published via GalNet.
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Covering more actual in-game events is great idea, but it will be a shame to get rid of those "flavour" stories completely.

You should either write them in a way that rules out confusion (f.ex. tabloid type articles about minor domestic problems written in a humorous way, something like "a day in life of Alliance citizen - in today's article we're visiting Greg McDull, ratcatcher in city of XYZ on Azeban, Eranin"
or, they should describe in-game places or things like rare commodities "Interview with Mr.Blahblah maker of umbrellas from Eshu", "What's so special about Indi Bourbon?" "Banki Whale hunter - endangered profession?"

Great opportunities for fun stories related and pointing to actual game content.
 

marx

marx
Well, since you didn't say that you're going to be increasing the "manual" events that are happening in the game, I guess this means one GalNet article per week. Plus a couple more when larger patches are released that do have new ships and modules, meaning... a few extra articles every half a year or so? (I mean, IIRC the last new ship we have was the Mamba, back in December.)

I would hope that the pace would quicken, but nothing in your post says so. Well, at least it's good if all the GalNet articles will have in-game presence. But without more things happening, this just sounds like "we're further reducing the efforts of the skeleton crew that's working on the live game".
 

Turd Ferguson

Turd Ferguson
marx said:
Well, since you didn't say that you're going to be increasing the "manual" events that are happening in the game, I guess this means one GalNet article per week. Plus a couple more when larger patches are released that do have new ships and modules, meaning... a few extra articles every half a year or so? (I mean, IIRC the last new ship we have was the Mamba, back in December.)

I would hope that the pace would quicken, but nothing in your post says so. Well, at least it's good if all the GalNet articles will have in-game presence. But without more things happening, this just sounds like "we're further reducing the efforts of the skeleton crew that's working on the live game".
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welcome to maintenance mode :)
 
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